Alfred Muttings was executed by guillotine in Paris on July 6, 1914, convicted of the murder of Philippe, Duke of Orléans. His death, mere weeks before the outbreak of the First World War, marked the end of a life shrouded in secrecy, invention, and deception. Born in the coastal town of St Leonards, East Sussex, in 1863, Muttings spent most of his adult life in London, operating at the fringes of legality as a master forger and counterfeiter. His works—banknotes, paintings, documents—passed through the very institutions designed to detect them. By 1905, with British authorities closing in, he vanished into the Parisian underworld.
This book reconstructs, as faithfully as the fragmented record allows, the life of this elusive figure. Drawing on police reports, court transcripts, forged materials attributed to Muttings, and long-forgotten correspondence, The Life and Death of Alfred Muttings offers a meticulous, and at times contentious, biography. It interrogates the inconsistencies in the case against him, the shifting motivations behind the Duke’s murder, and the possibility that Muttings’ entire Parisian identity may have been yet another forgery.
Part academic monograph, part true-crime dossier, this work treats the life of Alfred Muttings not only as a historical puzzle, but as a mirror to the anxieties of late imperial Europe: identity, legitimacy, and the artifice of power.
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